Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Trucker shortage vs Legalized Marijuana

And then there is the agricultural exceptions. I don’t have a problem with joe farmer driving truck, they more than likely drive better than the Nigerian immigrant.

But, the hours they can run is basically unlimited.

Just about every frac sand truck driver I see these days is not from these parts.

And yet, based on actual accident statistics, trucks operating under the agricultural hours of service exemption have a lower accident rate than trucks that are required to follow HOS.

Almost like the government screwed that pooch, too, huh?

Though I admit the new rules are much better: thank you, Trump.

Harvest time ,(limited time frame provided by mother nature ) hauling animals , reason obvious .

Honest work, it'll keep the kids off welfare.

But apparently most Americans have become too good for it. Many would rather just wait for a .gov check.

A lot of Americans are going to be real shocked when they learn that "Every one according to his ability" goes along with "Every one according to his need".

This ^^^

kwg

Just like my employer in Oregon. Pot is legal here, of course, so is alcohol. But if a piss test shows any trace of either in your system while at work, it is the same as crystal meth, or heroin.

Zero tolerance.

Should be the same for anyone herding 80,000 to 105,000 lbs down the road with nothing to keep him from crossing the lane and hitting me head on, but a yellow striped line on the road.

It is but the ones who do it always have their little packet of stuff to dump in their piss.

Nonsense

Nothing to do with mary-jane, but an interesting take on truck driver shortage reasons.

I get it Krystal Ball is a Bernie supporter, but truckers, is there any fire behind that smoke?

Are you saying there is zero tolerance for BAC? As in 0.0000 readings? Therefor anyone who was out a little late, got 8 hours sleep after drinking at their kid's wedding reception, but still had, lets say a detectable level below the legal limit of 0.03, a valued employee would be out the door?

My brother did one of those lease to own deals back in the 80's. Got out of it after realizing the company he worked for (a national moving company) was providing him enough work to make the payment on the tractor without much leftover. Other little brother and I rented out his house while he was on the road so he didn't lose it. When he got out of that gig, he got a short haul job doing dirt and hazmat for an actual wage or getting paid by the ton/mile in one case.

There's more than a little truth in her story I think. It's likely worse now than when he was in that business. Eventually, he got a transit company job so he could get a retirement.

If you want truckers that don't smoke weed then pay enough that you'll get truckers who don't smoke weed. It's as simple as that.

Companies want responsible choir boys to drive their trucks but they pay crap wages and offer miserable working conditions. There are plenty of people out there who aren't potheads and will work hard for you, but you have to pay them and make the working conditions such that their life doesn't suck.

It's the free market. If you want someone to act professional then treat them like a professional.

Valsdad,
Your brother worked for ComTrans. A division of North American.

Tau trucking companies had been advertising hiring 21 years olds
to drive truck. The day I turned 21, I called them, got their
packets later that week. ComTrans and Schneider.


Read the Comtrans stuff
Lease to own, from the people who controlled my income?
I couldn't even pick my truck. Got stuck in an old one, "with the future
opportunity to upgrade".


I smelled the rat, and went with Schneider.
Eventually ComTrans was put out of business due to their practices.


Sken,
Crystal definitely has some fire with the smoke.
Never been a container hauler from ports, but I've sure done
enough time to have experienced everything she says, except the
crooked lease agreements. Research Prime Trucking, for that info.
And they are a big "legitimate" outfit. Imagine the mob outfits at ports.

Standard trip planning values,
2 hours for any load/unload,
1 hour for drop and hook trailer
1/2 hour for pretrip
1/2 hour to fuel.

These standards are used to calculate if one can meet the requirements
for pickup and delivery of an offered load.

I often would do a load a day as a long haul guy.
So, unload+reload+fuel and pretrip.
5 hours unpaid. In the plan.
It takes at least an hour to load anything.
I have spent as much as 2 days waiting. (Not often. But up to 8 isn't uncommon) No layover pay until it hit 24 hours.

Grocery warehouses are horrible 4-8 hours to unload are common.
A hand unload paid $50 (1990s) and was planned at 4 hours. That would be quick. Due to dock requirements and procedures.
Hand unload or not, you had to get the freight out of the trailer, with
a manual or motorized pallet lift. Often, you had to take a layer(plus)
of product off each skid and stack it on others to meet their skid size
requirements. We had to touch 70 or 80% before we got paid. So this was
usually free.

Not sure how this has all changed in 20 years.

But,
My hours of service laws were 10 hours driving, or,
15 hours combined driving/work, then an 8 hour break.

And we logged it on paper with a pen. And lied like hell.

Today, it's 11 hours driving, 10 hour break.
But there are 2 critical wrinkles.

If you drive an electronic engine truck, you are pretty well mandated
to use electronic logging.

There is a 14 hour window to work in.
Once you do any work, or drive, a 14 hour clock starts.
You have the potential to drive 11 hours, but within 14.
So if you unload then load at 4 hours, that used your time and you
now only have 10. Fuel and pretrip down to 9.
Get screwed at a dock?

In my trucking days, we lied on the logbook. Shifted time and the
wasted time was shown as off duty or sleep time. We lost sleep,
But kept clocking paying miles.

I mentioned the electronic logs?

You slept at a delivery costumer last night,
And they wake you, tell you to back into door number 3.
When you release your brakes and move,
that 14 hour clock just started. And there is nothing you can do about it.

The 14 hour rule and the E-logs have been causing problems
in the industry for a few years. I really don't think any of the
desk drivers that made these rules had any idea how much we
got screwed with, or how much we lied in our logs.

Went on here, but..

With paper logs if you got sleepy, and had time on the load,
you pulled over and took a nap. Didn't log it. You waited untill
later and put that time with the 4 or 5 hours you were down that night.

Now, if you get the afternoon nods, (or 4am) you can't nap.
That 14 hour clock is ticking. When it is up. You gotta
shut down, or you are in violation. And it's recorded, reported, and
you can't do Jack crap about that.

Truck accidents are up.
Despite these regulations?
Or because of them?

Ahh sugar beet harvest here in the valley is about complete. Grannies can park their beet spilling, red tag special after a 20 hour day.


I worked for a company hauling grain and fertilizer, cake work. When spring rolled around we hauled fertilizer to the farmers and our floaters. 0600 to midnight with maybe 4 hours a day sleep, fugk that.

That company would have thrown your azz under the bus so fast if you got in an accident. The only truckers that should be ag exempt are Bull haulers.

Mister subsidized farmer wouldn’t be held liable. Can’t interfere with their Mexican vacation plans or his ol ladies trip to Fargo.

Dillon, you are exactly correct, the desk jockeys and their 14 hour rule made things much more unsafe. Electronic logs just made it worse.

Example: we run from Twin Falls to Seattle. Load in the afternoon, for a little over 600 mile run. In the paper days, you’d run till you got sleepy, about 11 or so, went down for some sleep, and picked it up again in time to hit the receiver when they opened in the morning. You’d have 18 hrs or so to do the 11 hrs, so you got time for some beans and some zzzzz’s. If there was snow, oh, well, you slowed down and slept an hour or two less, and just pencil whipped the log into submission.

With the 14 hr clock and and electronic logs, no slowing down for snow, and absolutely no naps. You had to push through the 2 -4 am drowsy period, park at the receiver at 4 am and only then could you get some rest. And then your entire next day was messed up, because moving the truck into the dock. meant your 10 hour break was interrupted, so you’d have to start another 10 after you were unloaded before you could drive again. So a one day trip took two days to do legal. This is where a lot of today’s capacity constraint came from.

The good news is that the FMCSA, under TRUMP, recognized the idiocy of that inflexibility, and modified the rules. You can now stop the 14 hour clock with a rest period of at least two hours, (part of the updated split sleeper rule).

We’re running livestock, so technically we are allowed to still use paper, but we use ELD’s. Betwixt the Ag exemption rule and the new split sleeper, we can run hard enough legal that the convenience of the ELD doing all the logging and calculation work is worth the rigidity.

Unfortunately, the new split sleeper rule is pretty hard to understand, many of the larger trucking companies do not allow their drivers to use it, because they’d eff it up. So the 14hr rule still messes with a lot of drivers on a daily basis.

Dutch,
I keep informed, but am on the outside edge of the loop.😉
Might need to jump back in one day.

Is the split sleeper rule much different than the old one?

Must start with a full break.
At least 2 sleeper hours.
Driving hours on either side can't be added up to more than 10 (11 now).

So we did 5 driving, sleeper for 2+, than 5 driving, next break added to last
had to equal 8. Usually team it was just 4 on, 4 off.

I never used that solo. It was too screwy.
Instead, usually got the book inline in the morning,
maybe tuned it up early afternoon. Then waited untill morning.

The DOT guys were almost always cool. If they caught me, they
were happy if you could lie fast enough to be there legal.
They knew the drill,
could tell if you were legit, or chewing toothpicks.😉

The split sleeper is the same, except it can now be done with as little as 7 hrs in the sleeper, rather than 8, and the first break pauses the 14. So you can actually pull up short of Seattle during rush hour, grab dinner, Face time the kids as they get ready for bed, and then cruise on for a few hours after traffic has died down. Or the snow has stopped, or the sun has set and is not in your face, or whatever.

Takes a huge amount of pressure to “go, go, GO” off the drivers.

As an aside: the new administration is now taking a very hard look at the detention issues, specifically, that you mentioned earlier. For the first time since I bought a truck and started paying attention in ‘06, is there a discussion about the crap life that trucking has become. The statistics on increasing accident rates, despite the new HOS “safety rules”, despite all the new “safety systems” like auto braking that are on trucks, despite mandatory electronic logging..... the statistics now clearly show things keep getting worse, not better. The answer obvious to anyone with any kind of common sense is : quit running the experience hands out of the industry.

The improved flexibility and sensibility of the latest HOS revision was a good step. Keeping drivers from sitting unpaid for half a day before unloading at HEB would be a very good second step.

We shall see.

Without getting into the controversial why's, union is one you know
the other, drivers are way under paid in most cases.

Look at Wal-Mart. Their per mile isn't huge. But when you pay a
driver for all his time that you require, it adds up.

I know guys who drove in the 60s through 80s.
Guys who used to bring home $3-500/wk. Actual bring home.
When a new Camero was $3-4k and a nice home could be bought
for under $20k.

Those guys were wealthy. People envied truck drivers.

The truck has become way more comfortable and friendly,
The roads are better.

Pretty much every other part of the job has gotten worse.
As an earlier post, people are willing to drive, when they can't do
anything else. There really isn't much to attract people.
Even for the naive ones who are attracted to the pay,
The lifestyle and the uncomped hassels outweigh the money.

Plus there really is a status thing, many don't realize it or even deny it.
But it's there. It's become hard to be proud of a profession so
many look down on.

Ironically, they also would deny it. But listen to them talk,
watch them drive. Trucks are nothing but a problem for them.